Topic
Streetwear
Shawn Stussy started selling surfboards in Laguna Beach around 1980, signing each one with the scrawl that became his clothing logo. Streetwear grew from beginnings that small, out of surf shops, skate shops and hip-hop, and it ended up changing how the whole fashion business sells clothes. James Jebbia opened Supreme on Lafayette Street in New York in 1994 and refined the weekly drop. Nigo founded A Bathing Ape in Tokyo in 1993. Lev Tanju started Palace in London in 2009, and Ronnie Fieg opened Kith in New York in 2011. Virgil Abloh launched Off-White and later became artistic director of Louis Vuitton menswear in 2018. Jerry Lorenzo founded Fear of God in Los Angeles in 2013, and added the lower-priced Essentials line in 2018. The crews and neighborhoods behind the labels get as much attention as the labels, including the Lo-Lifes in Brooklyn, the backstreets of Ura-Harajuku and the shops of Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, where Supreme opened its West Coast store in 2004.
Stories
SneakersFeature4 min read
Union Takes the Padding Out of the Nike Dunk
Natural Selection strips the Dunk Low to unlined suede and a heel that folds flat. Three colorways land at Union on October 30, and one hits SNKRS a week later.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The Hoodie Started on a Rochester Sideline
A 1938 patent turned a sweatshirt sideways. Eighty years later MoMA collected it and Authentic Brands paid $1.2 billion for the company.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Sneakers4 min read
The adidas Superstar and the Shell Toe That Outran the Court
Built in 1969 to pry American basketball away from canvas, the shell toe found its real audience on the street. Then Run-DMC pulled the laces.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
SneakersFeature5 min read
Air Jordan 1, the 1985 Sneaker That Built a Culture
Peter Moore's red, black and white high top turned a rookie endorsement into the most influential sneaker ever made. The ban myth turns out to be the best part.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Aimé Leon Dore and Teddy Santis, From Queens to Mulberry Street
A curtained shop on Mott Street, a Greek café on Mulberry and a forgotten 1989 basketball shoe. How a Queens kid built New York's most watched quiet label.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Virgil Abloh, Off-White and the Age of Quotation Marks
An architecture graduate from Rockford put quotation marks on Nike, IKEA and Louis Vuitton. Five years on, the punctuation is still doing the talking.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
CultureFeature4 min read
How Hip-Hop Rewrote Menswear, From Run-DMC to Nigo
Shell toes, Harlem couture, boosted Polo and a Tokyo ape. How four moments in hip-hop took over menswear and never gave it back.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Travel4 min read
SoHo, New York: A Streetwear Guide From Lafayette to the Bowery
Cast iron, cheap lofts and a skate shop that opened in 1994. How the blocks south of Houston became the place menswear lines up.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
How Detroit Workwear Became Carhartt WIP
An importer in Europe wanted the real American thing. Thirty years later his version of Carhartt sells collabs with sacai and runs over 100 stores.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Travel4 min read
A Streetwear Pilgrim's Guide to Tokyo's Ura-Harajuku
The backstreets behind Omotesando gave the world BAPE, Undercover and the modern drop. A walk through where it happened and how to see it now.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Kith and Ronnie Fieg, From Stock Boy to Store Empire
Three pairs of Asics, 252 of each, and a cereal bar. Ronnie Fieg turned a sneaker buyer's eye into one of the most watched retail brands in the world.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Nigo After Bape, Human Made, Pharrell and the Kenzo Years
He walked away from the ape and built something slower. Then LVMH handed him a Paris house, and the stock market came calling.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
Stone Island, Massimo Osti and the Compass Badge
It started with truck tarpaulin in a town outside Modena. Forty years on, a cloth compass still tells strangers exactly who you are.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Sneakers4 min read
Nike Dunk History, From College Colors to the Pigeon Riot
The Dunk was a 1985 team shoe that basketball forgot. Skaters, Japanese collectors and Sandy Bodecker's Nike SB turned it into the most hunted sneaker of the 2000s.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Supreme and the Rise of the Drop Model
A Lafayette Street skate shop turned Thursday mornings into a ritual, scarcity into a business plan and a $30 brick into a collectible.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Palace Skateboards, the Tri-Ferg and London's Cheekiest Brand
A squat near the Southbank, an impossible triangle and a sense of humor nobody in skating could copy. How Palace made London matter again.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
JJJJound, the Montreal Mood Board That Became a Label
No captions, no logo worth mentioning, no noise. Justin Saunders turned a wall of saved pictures into one of the most trusted names in menswear.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The MA-1 Was Built to Be Found
Sage green outside, rescue orange inside. How a Cold War flight jacket from Knoxville ended up on punks, mods and a $47,000 Grailed sale.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Stüssy, the Laguna Beach Signature That Started Streetwear
A surfboard shaper signed his boards in marker, printed the scrawl on a T-shirt and accidentally drew the blueprint for every streetwear brand that followed.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Travel4 min read
Seongsu-dong, Seoul: From Shoe Factories to Pop-Up Capital
Seoul's old shoemaking district now hosts Dior, ADER and more pop-ups than anyone can count. The workshops are still there if you look.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
KAWS and the Companion, How a Vinyl Toy Took Over Art
A Jersey City graffiti writer drew a cartoon with crossed-out eyes, sold it as a toy in Japan and ended up floating it across Victoria Harbour.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Sneakers4 min read
Nike Air Force 1 and the Baltimore Stores That Saved It
Nike killed the Air Force 1 in 1984. Three shops in Baltimore refused to let it go, and the shoe has barely been out of production since.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Travel4 min read
Fairfax Avenue, Los Angeles: The Streetwear Block After the Boom
A Jewish deli street turned streetwear capital turned cautionary tale. Fairfax is quieter now, and more interesting for it.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
Patagonia Synchilla and the Long Road to Gorpcore
A climber who forged his own pitons, a Massachusetts mill and a polyester pullover with four snaps. Then fashion noticed.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Sneakers4 min read
Vans Old Skool and the Doodle That Became the Sidestripe
In 1977 Vans put a stray line on the side of a skate shoe called Style 36. It turned a small Anaheim shoemaker into a brand you can spot from across a park.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture4 min read
Inside the Sneaker Resale Economy, From Flight Club to StockX
A pair of shoes can change hands several times before anyone wears it. The machinery runs from the consignment wall to the authentication bench.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Style4 min read
The Varsity Jacket Began With One Letter H
In 1865 Harvard's baseball team stitched an H on its shirts. The letter turned into a reward, then a sweater, then the most borrowed jacket in America.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Sneakers4 min read
Salomon XT-6 and How an Ultra Shoe Ended Up in Paris
The XT-6 was built for runners racing a hundred miles through mountains. Then someone at Salomon found a box of them in the archive and changed the colors.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Culture3 min read
Fear of God and Jerry Lorenzo, the Long T-Shirt That Built a Label
A ballplayer's son with an MBA and no fashion training made extra-long tees, caught Kanye West's eye and taught American luxury to relax.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
Travel4 min read
London's Soho and Dover Street Market: A Streetwear Guide
From John Stephen's His Clothes in 1957 to Rei Kawakubo's beautiful chaos on Haymarket. A walk through London's best square mile for clothes.
By Quiet Menace Editors /
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